The British government is about to unveil proposals to block the Internet for copyright enforcement purposes. The confirmation came in a Parliamentary debate yesterday on Intellectual Property, in which pro-copyright MPs had a little 'chit-chat' about the allegedly 'anti-copyright' government, and indicated their desire for the activation of the Digital Economy Act.

When I heard yesterday that Richard Hooper had been appointed to run a feasibility study for the proposed Digital Copyright Exchange, I was optimistic that finally someone in authority would bite this poisoned bullet and wreak change on the stifled copyright industries. Regrettably, on examining the Feasibility Study document, I see little basis for maintaining that optimism. There is an urgent need for a shake-up of copyight licencing in the EU, but sadly this study is unlikely to carry the weight necessary to get it past the mighty copyright industries.

In an astonishingly frank admission, a key civil servant who worked on the Digital Economy Act (DE Act) has revealed that the UK government did not gather any evidence to support the copyright enforcement policies. They just relied on statistics supplied by the rights-holders. Worse still, civil servants were not able to assess how those statistics were compiled - because the rights-holders weren't willing to let them. Finally, in a damming indictment of the civil service processing of the DE Act, he let slip that they were just trying to make "the best brick they could, with what straw they could find".

The British government's assessment of DE Act implementation costs to justify the SI Costs Order presents a positive cost-benefit. But is the government painting too rosy a picture?

The government presented a one-off cost of £11.5 million, and "average annual costs" of between 6-20 million, against a benefit, calculated using Net Present Value techniques, of between £84m - £164m. But the government figures did not include the running costs for Ofcom. More significantly, they fail to include the costs of the Appeals Process. When those costs are factored in, the picture changes quite significantly. Using the

5th post in a series on the government's response to Hargreaves

Did the DE Act intend private companies running (Indian?) call centres to be the Appeals Body?

Under proposals published in August, Ofcom plans to privatise the Appeals process for the Digital Economy Act copyright enforcement measures. Ofcom plans to run a commercial tender for a private company to run the new Appeals body, which will sit in judgement on allegations of downloading copyrighted material and ultimately on whether people are cut off. Effectively, the Appeals Body, which will perform a quasi-judicial function, will be outsourced,